Oh, and you should help out here. Not everyone understands the strand of hardcore libertarianism that some people on/. support. Part of the problem is that very few people give any reasoning for their positions, even if it is just a sentence or two. The link between taxs and immorality simply isn't all that clear, since I see tax payer money doing lots of good things every day. (I see it do bad things too, but the good outweigh the bad)
Taxation buys you civilization. If you don't want that, then go live out in the woods somewhere. And you better get rid of that computer, tax payer money funded quite a bit of the research that went into making it possible.
Don't provide any arguments or proof to support your position. Then someone out there might actually end up agreeing with you, instead of replying saying "How in the world is this unconstitutional or immoral"? An incorrect policy decision, maybe, but immoral? Give some damn reasoning.
Why don't you stop posting your accusations of brainwashing and realize you are getting modded to oblivion because you are wrong. 100% wrong. I already responded to one of your other comments linking that crappy video and website, but I'll respond to more of your comments just because I feel like feeding the trolls today.
Any independent research will show that the only people claiming a benefit from flu shots are either profiting, or governmental organizations.
How about all the people who haven't gotten smallpox? How about the people who haven't been crippled from polio? Or maybe the people who have avoided tetanus, measles, mumps, and rubella?
Oh right, you forgot about all of those people, even though that pretty much describes everybody.
You claim that people have been "brainwashed by propaganda" and criticize wikipedia then link to some random anti-vaccine site written by a bunch of people who wouldn't know the scientific method if it beat them over the head multiple times (large sample size of beatings necessary). This website has the audacity to suggest that there is a link between vaccines and AIDS, and the hilarious statement that there are no control group studies performed on vaccines. Every damn vaccine on the market has been tested in control group studies, a simple google search will turn up thousands of them. How can anyone take such an absurd website seriously?
What a ridiculous statement. Yes, viruses and bacteria mutate, but a vaccine is a good way of fighting it. Small pox didn't suddenly get worse when everyone got vaccinated, on the contrary, it was pretty much eradicated, save for lab samples. Vaccines have made a number of diseases practically unknown to the modern world thanks to their incredible effectiveness (polio anyone?), and here you are spreading completely wrong information about vaccination.
A realistic assessment of the flu vaccine can pretty easily show its value- it's around 60-70% effective, according to the sheet they gave me when I got vaccinated this year. If a majority of the people you come in contact with are vaccinated, it clearly reduces the probability of infection. This becomes especially important if you plan to visit anyone in a nursing home or hospital, in terms of protecting them as well as yourself from the flu.
So stop trying to out-think the logic of vaccination just to be different and go get vaccinated. It won't hurt you, it doesn't cause autism, and you won't turn into a zombie (and even if you do, brains may just be pretty tasty)
Your ridiculous hyperbole about teacher's unions in no way adds to, or furthers the debate. Simply put, teachers unions serve an important purpose in shielding teachers from local politics. Yes, there are problems with unions in terms of firing bad teachers, but at the same time, it'd be worse if we had purges of teachers whenever new politicians/school boards/superintendents/principals came into office, as you can see in many other levels of government and industry.
As someone else has pointed out, private schools look better than public schools in comparison simply because better students go to them. This isn't some rich person elitism argument, it's simple fact that private schools attempt to accept students who will succeed. Public schools accept everybody.
But all this debating about teachers unions really misses the point as to why the education system in the US isn't very good- parental involvement. It's a simple fact that children with parents who actually care about their school performance do better, and the education system isn't going to improve anywhere until more parents care. You can blame the teachers all you want, but the environment students have at home affects them way more than the effectiveness of their teachers. Fixing this isn't easy, and it's hard to provide any concrete policy proposals to achieve this, other than the vague notion of an incentive system to students and parents for good performance.
Who's to say that the papers refuting this research are correct? It seems to be taken for granted that the dissenting papers are correct, and thus the original papers are wrong. It seems likely that the refuting papers may be wrong, or that there are complex situations in which both papers are correct (to differing degrees).
Lets see you name those processes. Beyond applying for the greencard lotto when you're outside of the US or marrying someone, there is damn near nothing other than coming here and establishing yourself as an H1-B, then switching over later on.
Of course, I'm not really sure why anyone would want to work in the US when there are plenty of better options out there in countries not run by idiots, and populated by arrogant residents who've never left the US, but are damned sure that it's the greatest nation to ever exist.
Unless you can cite a person besides Dawkins, who is the only one I can think of who really does much in the way of pushing atheism, most atheists truly don't give a crap what people believe. They aren't out there trying to "save" people from god, there's no organizational structure trying to push atheist missionaries to convert people. Atheists don't care what you believe, most of us just want you to stop trying to "save" us or tell us what to believe.
It looked to me that building 7 was far enough away from any fire or heat enough to not cause thermal expansion on a scale like they describe.
And here's the problem with the entire conspiracy theory surrounding building 7. Until the people putting this garbage forward run their simulation and show scientifically that the collapse couldn't come from fire, most people are not going to believe a word you say. And they shouldn't. Without proof, your theories are meaningless. Go find some Civ/Mech E's to do some simulations and show that the government is lying.
Besides the airline pilot, there's the James Robinson who served as U.S. attorney in Detroit, Michigan, and as an assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration; and James Robinson of California, who loves tennis, swimming and flying to the East Coast to see his grandmother.
He's 8.
The third-grader has been on the watch list since he was 5 years old. Asked whether he is a terrorist, he said, "I don't know."
The list clearly works! He doesn't know whether or not he's a terorrist!
Yeah, I for one want to move to western Europe so that I can be lazy and get paid a whopping 400 euros per month or so (Germany). I'll be rich! My god, I'll almost be able to afford food along with my cardboard box!
There's nothing oppressive about adjusting for market externalities. The US isn't doing enough to adjust for them, and probably won't in the future, but a higher gas tax would do more to make the price of gas reasonable than lowering the gas tax, ironically enough (Higher gas tax combined with more money for clean energy/transportation research)
The arrogance of smokers who complain of the smugness of people who want to enjoy themselves without breathing in smoke the whole night is incredible. Your disgusting habit is making the air dirty, giving me a headache, forcing me to wash my clothes, and raising my risk of cancer. If you want to do all of those things to yourself, fine. Just go do it outside where everyone else doesn't have to deal with your stupid habit.
You're right that public transportation in the US sucks because "it doesn't go where you want to go, when you want to go." You're wrong when you say that the "US isn't laid-out for a public transportation infrastructure."
While it is true that even with a really good system there would be many rural areas in the US that aren't covered, that's not really all that bad. A good transportation system would allow people in rural areas to take their cars to the closest public transit point and let a bus/train/plane/whatever else take over from there. Suburbs, for instance, are perfectly good locations for train stations and bus routes, but they rarely exist, or if they do, they are horribly inadequate.
Take Oswego, NY as an example. It has 1 main road through town and 17,000 citizens along with a university located off of that main road. But in Oswego, the bus from the uni to a supermarket, for example, takes a good 30 minutes, whereas by car it takes 5. The hilarious part about Oswego's transit system, the "Centro", is that it won an award for excellence from the American Public Transportation Association in 2006. Meanwhile, the bus in Oswego comes at seemingly random times and doesn't get to its destination in a logical manner. Compare that to even the crappiest European bus systems, and any award at all is laughable.
The sad thing is that Oswego's transit system is hardly the exception. Nearby Rochester's bus system is even worse. Traveling into the city by bus will take at least 2-3 times as long from a suburb (say, from RIT) as it would by car. (Not to mention most of Henrietta, NY lacks the sidewalks necessary to safely walk to a bus stop anyway)
I could sit here all day listing problems with our transit system, but the reason I know we can improve public transportation around the country is that there are areas where public transportation really works. (Trains between CT and NY for example. Sure, Metro-North is dirty and old, but they generally run close to on time). It's going to take time to solve the problem of public transportation, as there are many chicken and egg issues that will only be worked out with time (transit authorities will only add new routes if they have more customers, but they won't get more customers unless they add new routes, etc). But as gas goes up, more people will switch to public transit. And this small amount will allow it to expand, which will mean more people will use public transit, and it will expand more, and so on.
They make the language a hell of a lot easier. Instead of learning some random word for a concept, it's just a logical combination of two other concepts. For example, how should someone with limited english knowledge know what an umbrella is? But with limited german knowledge, you know that a Regenschirm has something to do with rain (regen) and can quickly figure out that schirm (shield) is an umbrella. Same with Regenjacke/Regenmantel (rain coat).
The social contract applies regardless. If he doesn't like the society in the US then he should go somewhere better, it's not like those places don't exist.
Your belittling of the GP's post, and subsequent straw man argument, are completely unconvincing. The goal of the rules of the road are already such that if everybody followed them 100% of the time, the only accidents would be mechanical. Clearly, this isn't the case because neither drivers nor legislators are perfect and, in fact, in many cases are completely incompetent, but the roads are nonetheless safer with the rules we currently have than they would be without any rules at all.
Your example of simply having no 2 cars being on the same road at the same time example is especially wrong. Consider the "2 second following distance" rule. Many people don't follow it, but if they did (and paid attention to the road), there would be very few fender benders. Here is where the pay attention to the road part comes in. The current laws don't matter at all if people aren't paying attention to the road, and this is why people shouldn't be allowed to use cell phones in cars. Talking/texting on a phone has been shown to reduce the attention of the driver to the road. If the law doesn't deal with people paying attention to the road, then there will be no safety on the roads at all, since all of the other laws depend so heavily on that one simply concept.
If I wanted to do even half the things you listed above, it'd take me at least a day or two of long hours of fiddling studying and researching.
Wow a whole couple days of fiddling with something. Sure, everyone has "better" things to do, but that doesn't mean you couldn't play with it for a while over the course of a couple weeks and get it working like you want. It isn't rocket science, just a bit of RTFM.
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Oh, and you should help out here. Not everyone understands the strand of hardcore libertarianism that some people on /. support. Part of the problem is that very few people give any reasoning for their positions, even if it is just a sentence or two. The link between taxs and immorality simply isn't all that clear, since I see tax payer money doing lots of good things every day. (I see it do bad things too, but the good outweigh the bad)
Taxation buys you civilization. If you don't want that, then go live out in the woods somewhere. And you better get rid of that computer, tax payer money funded quite a bit of the research that went into making it possible.
Don't provide any arguments or proof to support your position. Then someone out there might actually end up agreeing with you, instead of replying saying "How in the world is this unconstitutional or immoral"? An incorrect policy decision, maybe, but immoral? Give some damn reasoning.
How about all the people who haven't gotten smallpox? How about the people who haven't been crippled from polio? Or maybe the people who have avoided tetanus, measles, mumps, and rubella?
Oh right, you forgot about all of those people, even though that pretty much describes everybody.
You claim that people have been "brainwashed by propaganda" and criticize wikipedia then link to some random anti-vaccine site written by a bunch of people who wouldn't know the scientific method if it beat them over the head multiple times (large sample size of beatings necessary). This website has the audacity to suggest that there is a link between vaccines and AIDS, and the hilarious statement that there are no control group studies performed on vaccines. Every damn vaccine on the market has been tested in control group studies, a simple google search will turn up thousands of them. How can anyone take such an absurd website seriously?
What a ridiculous statement. Yes, viruses and bacteria mutate, but a vaccine is a good way of fighting it. Small pox didn't suddenly get worse when everyone got vaccinated, on the contrary, it was pretty much eradicated, save for lab samples. Vaccines have made a number of diseases practically unknown to the modern world thanks to their incredible effectiveness (polio anyone?), and here you are spreading completely wrong information about vaccination.
A realistic assessment of the flu vaccine can pretty easily show its value- it's around 60-70% effective, according to the sheet they gave me when I got vaccinated this year. If a majority of the people you come in contact with are vaccinated, it clearly reduces the probability of infection. This becomes especially important if you plan to visit anyone in a nursing home or hospital, in terms of protecting them as well as yourself from the flu.
So stop trying to out-think the logic of vaccination just to be different and go get vaccinated. It won't hurt you, it doesn't cause autism, and you won't turn into a zombie (and even if you do, brains may just be pretty tasty)
Your ridiculous hyperbole about teacher's unions in no way adds to, or furthers the debate. Simply put, teachers unions serve an important purpose in shielding teachers from local politics. Yes, there are problems with unions in terms of firing bad teachers, but at the same time, it'd be worse if we had purges of teachers whenever new politicians/school boards/superintendents/principals came into office, as you can see in many other levels of government and industry.
As someone else has pointed out, private schools look better than public schools in comparison simply because better students go to them. This isn't some rich person elitism argument, it's simple fact that private schools attempt to accept students who will succeed. Public schools accept everybody.
But all this debating about teachers unions really misses the point as to why the education system in the US isn't very good- parental involvement. It's a simple fact that children with parents who actually care about their school performance do better, and the education system isn't going to improve anywhere until more parents care. You can blame the teachers all you want, but the environment students have at home affects them way more than the effectiveness of their teachers. Fixing this isn't easy, and it's hard to provide any concrete policy proposals to achieve this, other than the vague notion of an incentive system to students and parents for good performance.
Who's to say that the papers refuting this research are correct? It seems to be taken for granted that the dissenting papers are correct, and thus the original papers are wrong. It seems likely that the refuting papers may be wrong, or that there are complex situations in which both papers are correct (to differing degrees).
Lets see you name those processes. Beyond applying for the greencard lotto when you're outside of the US or marrying someone, there is damn near nothing other than coming here and establishing yourself as an H1-B, then switching over later on.
Of course, I'm not really sure why anyone would want to work in the US when there are plenty of better options out there in countries not run by idiots, and populated by arrogant residents who've never left the US, but are damned sure that it's the greatest nation to ever exist.
Right, and that orange glow that space heaters tend to give off is simply magic left over from the thermodynamics pixies.
Unless you can cite a person besides Dawkins, who is the only one I can think of who really does much in the way of pushing atheism, most atheists truly don't give a crap what people believe. They aren't out there trying to "save" people from god, there's no organizational structure trying to push atheist missionaries to convert people. Atheists don't care what you believe, most of us just want you to stop trying to "save" us or tell us what to believe.
An excellent post. Hear hear.
And here's the problem with the entire conspiracy theory surrounding building 7. Until the people putting this garbage forward run their simulation and show scientifically that the collapse couldn't come from fire, most people are not going to believe a word you say. And they shouldn't. Without proof, your theories are meaningless. Go find some Civ/Mech E's to do some simulations and show that the government is lying.
The list clearly works! He doesn't know whether or not he's a terorrist!
Yeah, I for one want to move to western Europe so that I can be lazy and get paid a whopping 400 euros per month or so (Germany). I'll be rich! My god, I'll almost be able to afford food along with my cardboard box!
No, it wasn't something he had to deal with. That was made up later.
There's nothing oppressive about adjusting for market externalities. The US isn't doing enough to adjust for them, and probably won't in the future, but a higher gas tax would do more to make the price of gas reasonable than lowering the gas tax, ironically enough (Higher gas tax combined with more money for clean energy/transportation research)
Sorry, I was unable to read your post. My internet tubes are clogged. Anyone got a race horse or a lotto ball?
The arrogance of smokers who complain of the smugness of people who want to enjoy themselves without breathing in smoke the whole night is incredible. Your disgusting habit is making the air dirty, giving me a headache, forcing me to wash my clothes, and raising my risk of cancer. If you want to do all of those things to yourself, fine. Just go do it outside where everyone else doesn't have to deal with your stupid habit.
You're right that public transportation in the US sucks because "it doesn't go where you want to go, when you want to go." You're wrong when you say that the "US isn't laid-out for a public transportation infrastructure."
While it is true that even with a really good system there would be many rural areas in the US that aren't covered, that's not really all that bad. A good transportation system would allow people in rural areas to take their cars to the closest public transit point and let a bus/train/plane/whatever else take over from there. Suburbs, for instance, are perfectly good locations for train stations and bus routes, but they rarely exist, or if they do, they are horribly inadequate.
Take Oswego, NY as an example. It has 1 main road through town and 17,000 citizens along with a university located off of that main road. But in Oswego, the bus from the uni to a supermarket, for example, takes a good 30 minutes, whereas by car it takes 5. The hilarious part about Oswego's transit system, the "Centro", is that it won an award for excellence from the American Public Transportation Association in 2006. Meanwhile, the bus in Oswego comes at seemingly random times and doesn't get to its destination in a logical manner. Compare that to even the crappiest European bus systems, and any award at all is laughable.
The sad thing is that Oswego's transit system is hardly the exception. Nearby Rochester's bus system is even worse. Traveling into the city by bus will take at least 2-3 times as long from a suburb (say, from RIT) as it would by car. (Not to mention most of Henrietta, NY lacks the sidewalks necessary to safely walk to a bus stop anyway)
I could sit here all day listing problems with our transit system, but the reason I know we can improve public transportation around the country is that there are areas where public transportation really works. (Trains between CT and NY for example. Sure, Metro-North is dirty and old, but they generally run close to on time). It's going to take time to solve the problem of public transportation, as there are many chicken and egg issues that will only be worked out with time (transit authorities will only add new routes if they have more customers, but they won't get more customers unless they add new routes, etc). But as gas goes up, more people will switch to public transit. And this small amount will allow it to expand, which will mean more people will use public transit, and it will expand more, and so on.
They make the language a hell of a lot easier. Instead of learning some random word for a concept, it's just a logical combination of two other concepts. For example, how should someone with limited english knowledge know what an umbrella is? But with limited german knowledge, you know that a Regenschirm has something to do with rain (regen) and can quickly figure out that schirm (shield) is an umbrella. Same with Regenjacke/Regenmantel (rain coat).
The social contract applies regardless. If he doesn't like the society in the US then he should go somewhere better, it's not like those places don't exist.
Your belittling of the GP's post, and subsequent straw man argument, are completely unconvincing. The goal of the rules of the road are already such that if everybody followed them 100% of the time, the only accidents would be mechanical. Clearly, this isn't the case because neither drivers nor legislators are perfect and, in fact, in many cases are completely incompetent, but the roads are nonetheless safer with the rules we currently have than they would be without any rules at all.
Your example of simply having no 2 cars being on the same road at the same time example is especially wrong. Consider the "2 second following distance" rule. Many people don't follow it, but if they did (and paid attention to the road), there would be very few fender benders. Here is where the pay attention to the road part comes in. The current laws don't matter at all if people aren't paying attention to the road, and this is why people shouldn't be allowed to use cell phones in cars. Talking/texting on a phone has been shown to reduce the attention of the driver to the road. If the law doesn't deal with people paying attention to the road, then there will be no safety on the roads at all, since all of the other laws depend so heavily on that one simply concept.
It's called HTML. Your nerd card is hereby revoked.
You can reapply once you take a training course with the 5th grade class in the computer lab down the hall. Enjoy.